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On March 22, 1865, 13,480 Yankee
cavalry in three divisions left their camps at Eastport, Alabama on
the south shore of the Tennessee River for the biggest raid of the
Civil War. Armed with Spencer carbines whose purchase for the
expedition was arranged by its commander James H. Wilson, this corps
would have devastating firepower as it aimed at the destruction of
the South’s remaining war manufacturing centers in the deep South of
the states of Alabama and Georgia. Wilson had successfully argued
with George Thomas for this campaign in the waning weeks of the
Civil War.
Wilson spent the early part of the
war in the East, including serving on George McClellan’s staff at
South Mountain and Antietam. He then went West and served as a staff
officer for U.S. Grant in the Vicksburg and Chattanooga campaigns.
Wilson became the youngest Union brigadier general. He was next
assigned to the War Department as head of the Cavalry Bureau. In
Spring, 1864, he took the field as commander of the Third Division
of Phil Sheridan’s Cavalry Corps of the Army of the Potomac. His
performance in the Wilderness and his Ream’s Station raid south of
Petersburg in June, 1864 were not auspicious but Grant sent him back
West in October, 1864 and he commanded ably at the battles of
Franklin and Nashville in the destruction of Hood’s Army of
Tennessee.
Originally scheduled to depart on
March 5, Wilson’s army was delayed by heavy rains. It also was
without its fourth division for lack of enough horses. Wilson’s
cavalry consisted of 23 regiments, including the 1st, 3rd, and 4th
Ohio. Notable among its commanders were First Division commander
Edward McCook, one of the many Fighting McCooks of Ohio, Fourth
Division Commander Emory Upton, best known for his assault at
Spotsylvania, and Fred Benteen, commander of the 10th Missouri, best
known for his role in the defeat of the 7th Cavalry at the battle of
the Little Bighorn in 1876.
Opposed to this huge Union cavalry
force were the small, scattered Confederate forces in Mississippi
and Alabama under the command of Nathan Bedford Forrest, the “Wizard
of the Saddle” and the nemesis of William Tecumseh Sherman and other
Union commanders.
As Wilson pushed through Northern
Alabama without resistance, Forrest desperately tried to concentrate
what few forces were available while the Confederacy also attempted
to defend the port of Mobile against the attack of Edward R.S.
Canby, who had been reinforced by another of Wilson’s cavalry
divisions.
On April 1, 1865, Wilson’s army was
met by Forrest at the village of Ebenezer Church, north of Selma,
the first target of Wilson’s raid. Forrest, without two of his
forces, could not hold back the flood of charging Union cavalry.
Wounded by a Union officer, Forrest personally killed a Yankee for
the last time.
Selma, Alabama was a center of
Alabama’s iron works region and produced a wide variety of weapons
for the Confederate armies and navy, along with food from Alabama’s
agricultural black belt. It was lightly defended with extensive but
some unfinished defensive works. On April 2, the wounded Forrest
conferred with Richard Taylor, the department commander, as he
prepared to entrain for Mississippi. To defend the city, Forrest had
only a few thousand troops and those civilians that he gathered in
the city. Against them was arrayed Wilson’s army (but without John
Croxton’s brigade detached to destroy the facilities at Tuscaloosa,
which became “lost” and did not rejoin Wilson until April 29).
Late on April 2, Wilson launched
his attack and overwhelmed the undermanned Confederate defenses.
2,700 Confederates were captured . Wilson’s casualties were 46
killed, including the commander of the 4th Ohio, and 300 wounded,
including the commander of the Second Division. Forrest escaped but
only a few days later he met Wilson, ostensibly to discuss a
prisoner exchange (but Wilson was attempting to determine the
whereabouts of Croxton’s “lost” force). Wilson wrote in his diary:
“Forrest did not impress me as I expected-neither as large,
dignified nor striking as I expected-seemed embarrassed”. Forrest
told Wilson: “Well, General, you have beaten me badly, and for the
first time I am compelled to make such an acknowledgment”. Forrest’s
attempt to defend Selma was his last Civil War battle.
Wilson’s men followed their victory
with the destruction of the Confederacy’s war plants (as they had
previously done enroute to the city). Wilson’s army then headed east
to capture Montgomery, the original capital of the Confederacy,
which surrendered without a fight on April 10. Wilson then headed
for the rail center of West Point, Georgia, which was captured on
April 16 and hundreds of locomotives and rail cars were destroyed.
That same night, Wilson’s troops also successfully routed the
defenders of Columbus, Georgia in the last battle of the Civil War
east of the Mississippi (and a week after Lee’s surrender of the
Army of Northern Virginia). Like Selma, Columbus was a major war
manufacturing center. While his army again wrecked Confederate
plants, Wilson stayed in the home of an avowed opponent of
secession.
The next night, Wilson’s army
headed for Macon, the state’s new capital following Sherman’s
capture of Milledgeville on his March to the Sea. Its commander,
having learned of the Sherman-Johnson truce in North Carolina,
surrendered on April 20 along with four other Confederate generals.
This effectively ended Wilson’s
Raid. Over the course of two months, his corps had killed and
wounded over 1,000 enemy soldiers and captured 6,820 Confederates,
while losing 99 killed and 598 wounded. His troops seized 288
artillery pieces and almost one hundred thousand stand of arms. His
path of industrial destruction included seven wrecked iron works,
seven foundries, seven machine shops, two rolling mills, five
collieries, thirteen factories, four niter works, three arsenals,
one naval yard,and one powder magazine. They also destroyed five
steamboats and the railroad stock plus many miles of tracks. And
they destroyed huge amounts of military supplies.
Wilson’s troops capped this saga
with the capture of Confederate President Jefferson Davis and his
fleeing refugee party on May 10 and then Andersonville prison camp
commander Henry Wirz. Following the Civil War, Wilson served in the
Corps of Engineers until 1870. He later served in Cuba and Puerto
Rico in the Spanish American War and in China during the Boxer
Rebellion in 1901.
Post-Script:
In 2000, a monument of Nathan
Bedford Forrest honoring his 1865 defense of the city was unveiled
by the Friends of Forrest at a Civil War museum in Selma. After many
protests, the monument was moved to a cemetery. On March 12, 2012,
the head of Forrest was stolen and never recovered. In May, 2015,
the Friends of Forrest and the United Daughters of the Confederacy
erected a new bust of Forrest. After a dispute over restoring the
monument, the Selma City Council by a vote of 5-3 had deeded an acre
in the cemetery to the Daughters of the Confederacy, as well as
settling a lawsuit over the delay in permitting construction of the
new monument.
Reference:
James Pickett Jones.
Yankee Blitzkrieg: Wilson’s Raid
through Alabama and Georgia. 1976. |
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James H.
Wilson
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George Thomas
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Nathan
Bedford Forrest
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